Lucia Senza's Arc

Chapter 4 of 4

Artemisia stood on the step and waited. Lucia held the door two inches open. The girl was buried in the garden. The moth still hung on the glass behind her. Lucia knew why Artemisia had come. The tear in time had pulled her here, straight to the wall she shared. Now the seamstress smiled at Lucia's cold greeting, and Lucia had no story ready. No reason a stranger should knock. No lie to cover the mark on her window. "You have a moth on your glass," Artemisia said. Her voice was flat and even. "A large one. Black wings. They gather where things do not belong." Lucia's throat went dry. She had documented that creature for six years. Now the woman she watched named it back to her, calm as weather. Lucia said nothing. She had learned that a silent face gave nothing away. "I came because of the moth," Artemisia went on. "Not because of you." She tilted her head. "Are you alone in this house?" The question landed like a hand on Lucia's arm. She thought of Valeria folded into the dark earth. She thought of the two knocks, the brambles pulled across. If Lucia lied badly, Artemisia would read it in her mouth. So Lucia chose the truth she could afford. "My niece stays with me," she said. "She is resting. She is not well." Artemisia's clear blue eyes moved past Lucia's shoulder, into the dim hall. "A niece." She let the word sit. "I did not know you had family." "You know very little about me," Lucia said. "You do not receive visitors. Neither do I." For a moment neither woman moved. The moth's wings shifted on the glass. Artemisia looked at it, then at Lucia, and something settled in her face. She had come for a traveler. She had found a shut door and a widow who gave no ground. "Keep your niece indoors," Artemisia said at last. "The moth means the air near here is torn. People fall through such tears. If a stranger comes to your door, you send her to me." She stepped back off the stoop. "I mend what does not fit." "I will remember that," Lucia said. She closed the door and set her back against it. Her hands shook. The lie had held. Valeria was safe under the root, unseen, unnamed. But Lucia understood what she had just heard. Artemisia had all but told her the truth of the shop. She mended people. She stitched strangers into her time. And now she knew Lucia had a niece she had never mentioned before. Lucia went to the window and watched the woman cross back toward her own drawn curtains. The moth stayed on the glass. Lucia took out her record and wrote the date. Below it she wrote three words. She suspects me. The watching had turned. For six years Lucia had studied that shop. Now the shop was studying her.